Oregon Uses AHRQ Training to Establish an All-Payer Database

Influenced by the AHRQ workshop, "Using Administrative Data to Answer State Policy Questions," sponsored by AHRQ's Knowledge Transfer Quality Diagnostic Tools for States project in December 2008, attendees from Oregon successfully persuaded their legislature to establish an all-payer, all-claims database for the State. The legislation provides authority for the Office for Oregon Health Policy and Research (OHPR) to collect claims data from commercial health insurers, third-party administrators, managed care organizations, and pharmacy benefit managers.

AHRQ's workshop demonstrated to participants how administrative data could be used to support different policy objectives related to access to care, equity in payment, financial stability, accountability/transparency, and quality improvement. In addition to AHRQ staff's sharing the Healthcare Cost & Utilization Project's capabilities and resources, policymakers from Maryland, Minnesota, and Texas provided State-level applications of leveraging administrative data.

Sean Kolmer, MPH, OHPR Research Manager, and his colleagues attended the AHRQ workshop and returned to Oregon with information about the value of an all-payer, all-claims database. Kolmer's group initiated conversations with Oregon legislators that relied on AHRQ workshop information, describing the many policy applications that could be derived from maintaining such an administrative database.

Kolmer says, "The value of the [AHRQ] meeting was seeing how other States are doing things differently. We left the meeting with information to help move Oregon's legislative agenda forward."

The Oregon database includes Medicaid claims and information from Medicare. Implementation of this legislation is scheduled to be complete by fall 2011.